eSports Goes Mainstream

If Thousands Of People Are Competing, Why Does ESPN Refuse To Call This A Sport?

If you follow the video game industry or harbor even the slightest bit of interest for the medium, you're bound to have noticed a particular trend taking off within the last couple of years: the rise of eSports. Thousands of gamers compete in genres of all kinds, while millions tune in and provide their support. Though ESPN President John Skipper recently dismissed eSports as "not a sport," the fact is that these gamers' sports may be digital, but their talent is real. In a world where you can score million-dollar partnerships with a few clicks of the mouse, these up-and-coming stars are making a name for themselves in the pro-gaming circuit. Now, more than ever, it's become a legitimate career that gamers pursue for fame, fortune and notoriety within the video game community.

But it's not as though eSports are a brand-new concept. Gamers were competing for money and street cred even before Blizzard hit the scene with popular real-time strategy title StarCraft in 1998. It's only within the past four years, however, that the field has positively blown up, metamorphosing into the wildly successful sport it is today.

You've got organizations such as Major League Gaming (MLG), formed in 2002, which has grown into one of the largest eSports organizations within the continental United States, thriving for 10 years and handing off thousands of dollars to those who emerge victorious from championship events streamed online, all while passionate gamers tune in via livestream. Aside from MLG, there’s Blizzard's StarCraft II World Championship (WCS), spanning 13 different events and including players from all over the world. These events are big business, and business is booming. Tournament after tournament springs up across the globe, and as the number of participants grow, so do the fans.

It's a process that's needed time to steep, especially over the past couple of years. With the introduction of MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games, the number of players taking up and getting interested in eSports has increased astronomically.

Every single day, there are more than 12 million people logging in to play League of Legends, a free-to-play MOBA that is the most popular online game according to worldwide polls. With more than 30 million active monthly players, that's more manpower than you can expect from even games like World of Warcraft. And with all of this gameplay comes experts, streamers and "casters," as they're called, who make their gameplay sessions, competitions and even their practice time available online.

Riot Games, developer of League of Legends, has gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to taking care of the community as well, with League of Legends having been deemed a professional sport by the US government in 2013. Riot Games had been campaigning for quite some time for LoL pro players to be granted that beneficial status, but it's so much more than just a title. The development meant that pro players would be able to come into the United States on working visas, making it much easier for international players to attend tournaments and other events.

With terms and conditions like those, it may sound like a relatively inaccessible world for "outsiders" to get caught up in, but the reality couldn't be further from the truth. Everyday players, especially those who transcend the "nerd" status that so many have unfairly placed upon them, are just like us. Most of the time, they're hardcore gamers who have taken their passion to the next level. And as attitudes change over the years, those who felt like "losers" or "geeks" for spending time with video games as children are finding that their skills will, quite literally, pay their bills if they put in enough effort.

"Grubby," also known as Manuel Schenkhuizen, is one such player who’s let his skills do the talking ever since he burst on the scene. Formerly of Team Evil Geniuses, Grubby's game is StarCraft II, but he's been in the business since the early 2000s, when he emerged as one of the best Warcraft III players of all time. But it wasn't as though he experienced a meteoric rise to fame simply because he played a video game. The road to the big time, he notes, is a lot like becoming famous as a musician or a "traditional" athlete.